WWYD 2014-03-07

[Ozball]

Here's this week's weekly WWYD from MFC. Apologies for the bubble covering the two tiles in the discards. I'd already made my choice for the week and wasn't able to get a screenshot without it. I believe the covered tiles are a and a . Also the green highlighted tiles are ones that were tsumogiri'd ie they were discarded as soon as they were drawn.

[or2az]

I guess I'll take the first shot at this so as not to get influenced by others. Seems like lots of possible yaku, but due to my video game mentality, I would toss the and aim for seven pairs or toi-toi along with tanyao. If I were able to draw a quick , that's iipeiko with pinfu possibilities.
The 5566 dots provide additional drama for chows if I can keep it closed and pungs if I open the hand for the toi-toi. A headache is also a possibility.
( I can also envision 3 concealed pungs with some lucky draws, but I wouldn't count on it)
I cant tell if this is a hanchan or east round only, (is that what it says in green in the top right?) , but if the points are desperately needed, you might want to stay concealed and go for riichi-iipeiko-pinfu-tanyao, if possible. ( I might be over thinking all of this)

[Iapetus]

I choose 6m. It leaves the widest path to tenpai AND has the least backfires overall. The hand has tanyao dora2 already, so toitoi is unnecessary.

The main competitor isn't 4s, but 7m. Discarding 7m, 78m are backfires for a total of 7 tiles. Discarding 6m, 36m are backfires for a total of 5 tiles. Furthermore, some of the backfires for 7m discard are tenpais, while all backfires for 6m discard are just non-chiitoi iishantens.

[Masa]

One remark needs to be added, This game is no South.(half-hanchan)
Ozball has 12,300 Point. even still he will have dealer turn at 4th round, this turn is big chance to up set.
I want over mangan somehow. tan-pin-dora2 or riichi tanyao dora2 or riichi-tsumo 7 pair dora2 can expect. Toi-toi is almost impossible in your hand. due to other players looks like tan-pin hand, so that maybe the tile which I want to pon will not be discarded. I would discard . to keep 7 pairs 1-shanten, to reduce head candidates.

[Ozball]

Just to clarify: this isn't actually one of my games. It's this week's "みんなで何切る？" From MFCs website. They have a weekly problem and get a pro to comment on it after a week. My plan is to try and translate the pro commentary once it's out (next Monday).

Having said that here's my discard choice:
I felt it gave the most possibilities for developing the hand in different ways. Tanyao is pretty much guaranteed. Possible other yaku: ipeikou/double runs, Pinfu/peace. Also possible is ryanpeikou using the .

The pairs of and can be developed into ipeikou or triples depending what you draw, or even drop the and use the as your head of you draw tiles to complete you groups in bams and craks.

The reason I leave the craks alone is that you have all tiles from to improving your hand in some way. The way I view it currently is three possible groups. The obvious ones are the ipeikou and the run. Drawing a gets you the extra yaku and sets you up with a two way wait for Pinfu (albeit with a 6 tile wait instead of the ideal 8 ). Drawing a allows you to get 345 and the either 666 and drop the 7 later or 66 and 67 giving you a head and a two sided wait for Pinfu. A gives you the option of two triples 444 and 666 or a 44 456 66 and a double pair wait. Not ideal since you give up both the possibility of Pinfu and San Ankou, but in last place you need to take what you can get sometimes so if the draw gets you to tenpai with this shape then might as well take it. The I've mentioned and is the ideal draw in craks. allows for a 44 567 666 set up. A gives 44 666 77 marginally better than the double pair wait above, but mostly for the extra fu. While the is the second most ideal draw in craks as it still allows you to get ipeikou albeit at the loss of Pinfu most likely.

The bams are the least interesting in this hand. Hence the choice to drop the 3. The two sided wait to complete the run is best, and it's quite possible that you'll drop the 3 and 4 any ways to make way for extra yaku in the other suits.

[Ozball]

As is Monday and the start of a new week MFC have posted the results for this WWYD.

A breakdown of how many people picked which tile. The most popular one is also highlighted in purple. (My choice is in blue)


A JPML pro's response and selection (in green)
Takizawa Kazunori - 7th Dan
"Again we have a difficult hand without any of the four groups or the head decided. Because of that it's important to setup the flexibility properly. So while this is a discard question, in reality it's more about deciding whether to go iishanten for Seven Pairs, or advance towards tanyao-pinfu.
For me, if you only look at winning the hand then the tanpin is the way to go, as it's the easiest to win with. In which case the would be most widely accepted as the best discard. As this hand has two red 5s, even if I was in last place I would seek the secure win over the higher score."

Translation Note: In the final sentence he makes what seems to be a baseball reference (to RBI or Runs Batted In) which I'm not 100% sure on the meaning as I don't really follow baseball to that extent. Based on the context I translated it as "higher score" but if I've gotten this completely wrong then please let me know.

EDIT: some minor fixes to translation.

[Masa]

Your understanding is correct for "打点" in the context in his word is "high score hand". even though "打点" means "score" Japanese is high context language as you know:-)
One small correction "ラス目"(rasume) does not mean "last hand", it means "4th position"
So translation will be like following.

As this hand has two red 5s, even I am 4th position I would aim the secure win instead of high score hand"

[Ozball]

Your understanding is correct for "打点" in the context in his word is "high score hand". even though "打点" means "score" Japanese is high context language as you know:-)
One small correction "ラス目"(rasume) does not mean "last hand", it means "4th position"
So translation will be like following.

As this hand has two red 5s, even I am 4th position I would aim the secure win instead of high score hand"

Cheers for that! Yeah translating ラス目 as last hand didn't feel right since it should be オーラス in that case. But at the time couldn't figure out what else it could have been.

For 打点 I got the RBI definition when I looked up the kanji (as a group), so I just went with it. But yeah, the Japanese language loves it's contexts and ellipses.